Al Gore: Global Warming Struggle Akin to Civil Rights

By Deborah Hallberg

We've seen it before: Al Gore portraying global warming as a moral issue. Now he's gone one step further. He's compared the global warming crisis to the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and ‘60s.

The former vice president spoke at the recent Wall Street Journal's ECO:nomics summit, where he described his 10-year plan to get the country off carbon-based fuels as a "generational investment" and chastised the country for failing to take action.

But where he showed his desperation was where he compared global warming alarmists to civil rights activists, and global warming skeptics to southern segregationists.

"When Bull Connor turned those hoses on the demonstrators - peaceful, nonviolent demonstrators - a lot of kids asked their parents, hey, tell me again why that's not wrong? When their parents couldn't really give them good answers, that's when the tipping point came there. And I think we're close to a similar situation now, where enough people are saying, in all sincerity, tell me again why we shouldn't be solving this?"

He even made a reference to Bob Dylan's civil rights anthem, "Blowin' in the Wind," though he stumbles over the lyrics:

"How long will it take? Bob Dylan wrote the song, How many ... I can't remember the words, but you know, How many times will we have to go through this before people realize that civil rights are a birthright in this country, and shouldn't be denied on the basis on skin color?"

But Gore's effort to demonize the skeptics did completely escape scrutiny. Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish environmentalist abd author of "Cool It: The skeptical Environmentalist's Guide ot Global Warming," was in the audience and challenged Gore to a debate on the issue.

"I want to be polite to you," Gore said, in turning him down. "The scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand' issue," he said. "It's not a matter of theory or conjecture, for goodness sake," he added.